It is well known that patients undergoing surgery lose blood both during and after surgery. To compensate for this blood loss, physicians and medical practitioners must replenish the volume of blood lost by the patient and may do so in variety of way. One such known method is to give the patient a blood transfusion with allogenic blood. However, allogenic blood is expensive and the transfusion puts the patient at risk for infection and complications.
To avoid the use of allogenic blood, physicians and medical practitioners often use blood salvage and processing systems. These blood salvage and processing systems allow the physician and/or medical practitioner to collect the patient's own blood, process (e.g., wash) the blood, and autotransfuse the patient with their own blood or blood components. Autotransfusions with the patient's own blood greatly reduce the risk of infection and complications to the patient.
As mentioned above, blood loss not only occurs during surgery, but also post-operative. Accordingly, physicians and medical practitioners often utilize a wound drain to drain the blood from the surgical site. This wound drain may, in turn, be connected to a blood salvage and processing system in order to salvage the blood lost postoperatively.
As one may expect, the blood and fluid removed via the wound drain may contain various particulates such as debris and blood clots. To prevent these particulates from entering the blood processing system and interfering with the system's performance, current systems use filters located between the wound and the blood processing system to remove the particulates.
The volume of particulates collected by the filters may be important information. For example, if the volume of collected particulates is exceptionally large, it may be an indication of postoperative complications. Additionally, in some instances, physicians and medical practitioners may use this information to determine if additional fluids (e.g., compensation fluid or allogenic blood) should be returned to the patient (e.g., in addition to their own blood). Currently, to determine the volume of particulates, physicians and medical practitioner simply do a visual estimation. This visual estimation is qualitative and inaccurate.